eeds134649-LLP-1-2007-1-IT-GRUNDTVIG-GMPGrant Agreement 2007-3569/001-001This project has been funded with support from the European Commission.This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any usewhich may be made of the information contained therein.

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In search for the German CLAN: news journalists

The aim was to find a CLAN that has, due to its usual working hours, not much chances totake part in periodically organized cultural or vocational activities.The first thought of the German project was on lorry drivers. We imagined they’d have veryirregular working times, are often away from home and thus suffer in an extreme extentfrom the conditions described above. So we asked the unions and at a big transportcompany do get into contact with employees in this field.However, we had to discover that this CLAN was not interested in what we proposed. Therewere several individual reasons, but two traits that could be found in all interviews with lorrydrivers. Firstly, they don’t want to use media in the sense we proposed. They use digitalmedia of course to navigate on the roads, and also to send e-mails and thus to keep intouch with their families, but in majority don’t want to use media for other hobbies orinterests. This leads to the second point. Obviously, it fits to the

cliché

, but the largemajority of the lorry drivers we asked were only interested in watching films on tv and inregarding adult sites on their computers. They feared constraints and rejected themvigorously, and could not easily be convinced that this would not be the case.Of course it still might have been interesting to work with this CLAN. However, after severaldiscussions, we decided to choose another CLAN, as the focus of our work would too muchhave shifted from what the project intends to what would have been some kind of socialwork.With these experiences in background, we decided to look for a CLAN that is relatively welleducated and might be more easily fascinated by mediated vocational training on newsubjects, that thus might be more open-minded. We chose news journalists as our newCLAN.News journalists have to report when stories happen. Besides, they have to produce theirmedia – that is: newspapers, radio or tv news shows – even on weekends and sometimes attimes when other citizens are at home just to watch or listen to them: in the very morning(so they have to be produced at night – and the evening before is not available for otherthings to do), or in the very evening. News journalists by definition almost never haveregular working hours. In consequence, they suit to what is necessary to conduct ourproject.

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Being quite sufficiently educated, they also suit to what we, after the experiences with thelorry drivers, regarded as the second important restriction in searching a CLAN.This leads to the description of the sociological traits. For general information, we gotinformation from the following references that refer to research by media scientists andpolitical scientists: Altmeppen, K.-D. (1999):